


I'm just the same as I was

by zanzibar



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-10
Updated: 2013-10-10
Packaged: 2017-12-28 23:56:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,439
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/998430
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zanzibar/pseuds/zanzibar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He sends a picture of his newly expanded lashes to all three of his sisters with the caption “always the prettiest Kane.”</p><p>In which Patrick experiments, and unintentionally drives Jonathan crazy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I'm just the same as I was

**Author's Note:**

> I'm blaming Sudafed. This wanted to be porn. But the Sudafed wouldn't let it happen.
> 
> Title from Imagine Dragons ~ It's Time, because apparently Imagine Dragons is my Kane and Toews soundtrack.

Jackie will tell you that at least since birth Patrick has been comfortable in the eternal belief that nothing he can eat, wear or put on his body is truly out of the ordinary. He grew up with 3 sisters and has played hockey and hide and seek and dress up all with equal fervor.

Which is why when she gets the text message on a random Thursday in November she doesn’t really think twice about it. Until she does later.

The makeup bag has a subtle black and white pattern, it sits unnoticed and abandoned in the bathroom off the guest room for 3 days and then on the bar in his kitchen for another week after the cleaning lady leaves it on the counter with a note about putting the flannel sheets on his bed. By the time he has a minute to think about mailing it back home to Buffalo, Jackie’s already told him to keep it. She’s already bought everything again and she’ll just use it the next time she comes to visit.

It sits on the counter for another 2 weeks before he opens it. He isn’t looking for secrets, he’s not curious what brands she uses or what the contents are. He’s really just bored, eating toast and eggs and a healthy dose of avocado and salsa and drinking a blue Gatorade.

It smells like Jackie’s perfume and the faint chalky scent of the bathroom he shared for years with his sisters and for just one moment he’s so homesick he could actually die.

He arranges it on the counter, inasmuch order as he can tell, lipstick farthest away, because he’s had plenty of experience with the waxy taste of lipcolor in his life, and he’s not really interested in that angle anymore. Tubes of various shapes and sizes arranged by size and shape, mascara and concealer and some other crazy ass stuff that he’s not entirely sure about. An eyelash curler that looks designed for torture. Compacts in a neat stack, various pots of glitter and glitz and color in a row.

But it’s the pencils he’s drawn to, he has vague memories of watching his mom and all three sisters line their eyes, watching them willingly do things with sharp objects just a hairsbreadth away from their eyeballs, and another hazy recollection of waiting impatiently for Erica at Sephora and watching the prettiest boy he’s ever seen step up to a mirror, pencil held competently in hand, and line his eyes like it was something he did every morning, just after he brushed his teeth.

He draws a thin set of lines across the top of his hand before getting a little freaked out at the idea of all that pressure and pencil [pencil!] near his eye, and puts the pencils back in the pile before checking his email on his phone.

He ends up watching 2 videos on his phone and taking one of the tubes of mascara into the bathroom with him. He sends a picture of his newly expanded lashes to all three of his sisters with the caption “always the prettiest Kane,” and then jumps in the shower.

He doesn’t have time to really check his messages again, because by the time he’s out of the shower he’s running late to the rink and he’s seen about 200-too-many texting and driving video warnings lately and he inspects his lashes at the every stoplight to make sure that no evidence of mascara adventures remains.

After morning skate his phone is missing in action, totally lost, completely swallowed by the depths of his bag. He ends up dumping the entire thing on the floor in the middle of the locker room only to find that it has tucked itself into a beanie that has then folded in on itself. 

Before he finds it Patrick considers, for one frightening moment, that he’s going to have to use Find my iPhone to find his own phone in a backpack so small that it basically fits a pair of jeans and a hoodie, maybe. A wow, that’s pretty embarrassing.

His phone also has 27 texts from his sisters, completely overwhelming little numbers increasing next to each of their names on his home screen. Which isn’t that shocking when you consider that he sent a picture of himself wearing makeup and then went incommunicado for about 3 hours. He answers their questions while he stuffs his face with peanut butter and nutella toast and makes a haphazard grocery list. When he heads for his pregame nap he takes a picture of the giant bottle of spicy scented yellow face wash on the lip of his shower and sends it to Erica because apparently the mascara is waterproof and she doesn’t want him to have raccoon eyes against the Hurricane’s tonight.

Just before he falls asleep he gets the affirmative answer from Erica, along with some requisite bitching about stupid boys and their stupidly long eyelashes. 

The mascara keeps being fun, a welcome distraction, [a gateway drug Jackie accuses later], something that’s subtly noticeable in a way that won’t make the front page of NHL.com, but provides a secret squirrel kind of entertainment that keeps him on his toes.

The eyeliner comes next, he pays more attention the next time he watches Abby do it, the next time his family is in Chicago he hangs out and talks to Jess while she puts on her makeup, watches as she pulls the pencil along her eyelids and smudges like she’s performing some kind of oil painting tutorial on PBS.

The first 12 times he does it he looks a little too much like Captain Jack Sparrow. And not in the good way. He keeps practicing, because that’s what he does, whether it’s stickhandling or laser-sharp, pinpoint wrist shots or clean, powerful skating. He throws one of the pencils in his shaving kit and patiently lines his eyes before he washes his face every night.

He likes it even better than the mascara.

It’s more subtle, but at the same time a little more daring. The mascara is old hand now, he knows the lines, knows how much he can wear before people notice, knows that he can’t use black, black because he’s a redhead and that there’s a thin line between enhancing what you already have and becoming someone you aren’t.

The eyeliner is a thinner line, something new he can wear out with the boys, so long as he keeps it subtle, keeps the lines thin and expertly blended. 

It makes him look different, but no one can place how, no one knows exactly but everyone speculates. And he likes that too, likes being the center of attention, having everyone wonder but no one know exactly what’s different about Patrick Kane.

Johnny solves the mystery late one night in bed in a hotel room. It’s not exactly a lightning bolt, he doesn’t sit straight up in bed and say “aha” or “eureka” or anything. He has a vague hazy sort of recollection of TJ, eyes lined by one of the girls that lived down the hall from them, and the effect it had on his already soft features. He files that piece of information away for later, tucks his face more deeply into the pillow and falls asleep.

And then he just doesn’t say anything.

At first it’s because he doesn’t really know how to approach it. There’s no good way to say, “so bud, you been digging in your sisters’ makeup bags and testing things out?” And then there’s no good way to point out that he noticed and is also somewhat familiar with dudes in eye makeup. 

And, selfishly, he doesn’t say anything because he doesn’t want it to stop.

It’s unintentional. Johnny knows this because if Pat knew what he was doing he would do it more often and with more intent. Johnny has known Patrick for years, has probably loved him just as long, but it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out if Pat knew how irresistible he looks with lined eyes - he’d be completely insufferable. But instead it’s just laziness and his own entertainment that keeps him from wiping away the smudged line from beneath his eyes before he goes to sleep and the breathtaking result is Johnny’s cross to bear - even more smudged and more unexpectedly attractive.

One morning he comes to practice without showering. Without having stopped by to sit at Johnny’s breakfast bar before they made their way into downtown Chicago. The perfect lines from the night before have been replaced with something that looks almost artful, something that makes Johnny think of black and white pin ups and grainy, gritty photos in the back of magazines he’s not ready to admit he reads.

Johnny trips over every line and logo on the ice during practice.

There’s something utterly devastating about the contrast, the starkly black, blended line against pale and delicate skin. It makes Johnny feel things, want things. He never considered the soft, pale skin under Patrick’s eyes. Not until he fell headfirst into experimenting with his sister’s forgotten makeup bag.

It’s on an off night at a bar that it all comes to a head. Johnny can blame a lot of things. Hockey, shootouts, eyeliner, hybrid icing and the tuck rule. The CBA, eyelashes and the lockout. Biel and Tyler Seguin. But the truth of the matter is he’s tired of waiting. It’s simple really. It isn’t actually the eyeliner that pushed him over the edge, any more than it’s an intense desire to slide his fingers through the curls and use them to tug Patrick’s head to the side. It’s the package, it’s Patrick.

They share a cab home. Johnny riding high on the pinprick of anticipation under his skin, imagining the speech he’s going to give. The truths he’s going to reveal.

But before he can even open his mouth, it’s Patrick who steals the thunder.

“I wish you would stop looking at me like that and just kiss me,” Patrick leans against the counter and says it nonchalantly, like he’s wishing for a different flavor of Gatorade or a new set of skate laces.

Johnny drops his keys in a clatter on the tiled kitchen floor and tries for once to pretend like he’s genuinely that uncoordinated instead of being completely shocked. He opens and closes his mouth a couple of times while Patrick smiles and looks up at him from under his lashes and that’s pretty much the last straw.

Johnny slides a hand through the curls, because eyeliner or not the curls are still a thing for him. He touches their foreheads together for a minute, trying to calm his heartbeat enough that he doesn’t have a panic attack in the middle of his kitchen. He’s Captain Serious, he’s the eternal first shooter in the shootout, but right now, his nerves are shot.

Luckily Patrick’s eternally impatient and closes the distances before Johnny can fall over with the ramifications of what’s about to happen. Patrick tastes like beer and fried bar food he and Sharpie must have been sneaking at the other table. He kisses like he skates, equal part precision and recklessness and a touch of wild flair that can’t belong to anyone else.

They fall asleep on the couch, wearing boxers and tshirts, legs pressed together and drifting to sleep between kisses.

In the morning it’s weird. Because their dicks are pressed against each other and Johnny is totally into that, but the clock on the cable box says that any orgasms are going to have to be quick, and if it’s all the same Johnny wants to take his time, and maybe not be this hung over.

Patrick wakes up slowly, quietly, burrowing deeper under the blanket and against Johnny’s chest and pushing back against the hand that Johnny’s rubbing rhythmically against his back. 

“We have to leave in 37 minutes,” Johnny’s voice is deep and rough, like he spent the night drinking and making out on the couch. Patrick hums in response and rubs his nose against the side of Johnny’s neck, pressing a kiss below his ear before pulling back just a little.

“Oh,” Johnny blinks “you still have,” he gestures awkwardly, like this entire thing isn’t awkward. Like they aren’t pressed against each other on the couch in a way that can maybe be blamed on the beer the night before, if they’re really careful. But instead it’s the light of day, the smudged gray-black line remains under unexpectedly clear eyes. Eyes that are laughing just a little, like Pat knows that he isn’t good at morning-afters. Which honestly, Pat does know that he isn’t good at morning afters, and he’s probably had more mornings after with Pat than anyone else, ever.

Johnny cups his face, because at this point it feels like he can’t help it. He slides a finger along the delicate skin under Pat’s eyes and comes away with the remnants of something that has started to mean more than he ever expected.

They kiss on the couch until they have 13 minutes till practice starts, they drink protein shakes in the car on the way and time the red lights so that they slide in just under Q’s watchful [unlined] eye.

* * *

The pencil is his own now. Bought by Jackie who had found her abandoned pencils on his bathroom counter, amongst the toothpaste and mouthwash and the 2 toothbrushes that quietly flaunt cohabitation. Jackie muttered things about diseases and vision and health and shook her head about “infection, god Pat what are you even thinking.” But all that means he has 3 kinds of eyeliner all his own.

Johnny likes to watch him put it on. He likes to wander into the bathroom and rest his hands on Pat’s hips, slide his fingers up and under to the soft skin of his sides, while Pat competently outlines around his eyes. Sometimes he digs his fingers tightly, fingers pressing tight against soft skin and bone, endorphins kicking his brain at the idea of more Tazer-hand shaped bruises branding Pat all his own.

Patrick’s learned exactly how far he can push the envelope, the nights where the thick kohl can be artfully smudged around his eyes and the events where a thin line is all that’s appropriate. No one ever calls him on it. Sometimes he knows they notice, sometimes he wonders if they'll say something. But no one ever does and in the end it’s just something fun, something he does for him, and for Johnny.


End file.
